Wireless

For many years now I have waxed poetic about the need for Apple to create a large screen phone. With the latest iteration of the iPhone, the “5” they decided to elongate the device but not make it wider. To me, this mistake is the worst that Apple has made since ignoring the market for seven-inch tablets and then playing catch-up with the iPad mini.

At first, when asked about larger screen phones, Apple said that they didn’t fit in the hand.

These are very dark days for people who work for many divisions of Microsoft as tablets and smartphones have absolutely decimated the PC market as evidenced by a decline of 14% in sales of PCs last quarter. This news comes on the heels of the Windows 8 launch, the new OS which fuses the best of the tablet and Windows experience in one platform. The only problem is the new OS with all its marketing and slick new form factors isn’t cutting it, as consumers gravitate towards smaller screen devices.

Expect many calls for Steve Ballmer to be fired and when you consider how many markets Redmond has squandered since 2000 you could make a solid case for pushing him out.

According to IDC, PC sales are in a tailspin with 76.3 million units sold in the first quarter of 2013. This number represents a decline of 13.9% compared to the forecast decline of 7.7%. These are the worst numbers since IDC started tracking in 1994 and it is the fourth quarter of year-on-year shipment declines.

With the billions of messages sent each year it is tough to come to the conclusion that messaging is broken but it is. If I send an SMS from a cell phone for example it typically goes to another cell phone. Lets say I am on a PC and want to communicate via SMS - I can use an email gateway but I would have to know which carrier first before I choose a gateway. For example Vodafone in western Japan uses the following gateway address: number@n.vodafone.ne.jp while Vodafone in Okinawa uses the following slightly different address: number@q.vodafone.ne.jp.

For Apple, this past week has got to have been the biggest nightmare the company has faced in well over a decade. Cupertino went from being on top of the world in the eighties to crashing in the nineties to soaring over the past decade as the company became synonymous with the mobile revolution. Samsung has been improving its Galaxy S line and the latest iteration, the S4 actually had as much hoopla around its introduction as an Apple event.

Finally there is a mobile competitor to Apple which can generate as much buzz around a product launch.

There is good and bad news for Pandora today. The streaming radio leader has for the first time found itself in a position to compete for radio advertisers on an equal footing thanks to its inclusion in an influential ratings network run by Strata Marketing. The potential in the streaming radio market has brought new competition.

It's worth noting the news recently broke that Apple has held talks with Beats Electronics LLC about collaboration and/or investment in a music service called Daisy – apparently these talks go back a decade but Steve Jobs wasn’t ready to act when they began. Although Apple hasn’t been announced as an investor in the deal, Daisy has just secured $50M from a group including Warner Music owner Len Blavatnik, Fort Worth billionaire Lee M. Bass, and Australian financier James Packer.

Aruba Networks had a few interesting announcements recently at Mobile World Congress 2013 and the first one shows how WiFi can be used as a differentiator and driver of retail traffic. In a deployment with NTT Broadband Platform or NTTBP the companies proudly unveiled the fact they are deploying a joint WIFi solution named Wi-Fi Cloud Services and its being deployed at over 10,000 Seven-Eleven locations as well as other retail locations owned by the mutual parent company in Japan.

This is important because the service includes an offering to consumers which allows them to come to the stores and download and stream music and other content. In this way the WiFi network supports a marketing initiative which makes the stores in-effect more "sticky."

As the content is the "hook" so to speak, it is imperative the quality of the network is up to par.

At this point we are all aware Apple has a new watch in the works and it is even thought to be released later this year. Pundits have even determined this product could be vastly more profitable for Cupertino than even the much-anticipated Apple TV. They call it a $6B opportunity!

One wonders however how different this product will be from the iPhone.

Perhaps the best part of my trip to Barcelona, Spain to visit Mobile World Congress 2013 was not having to worry about wireless broadband the entire time I was there. You see I was sent a review unit of the XCom Global wireless broadband device which allowed me to stay connected the entire time I was in the country without having to worry about roaming charges, overage charges and heaven knows what other sorts of fees and taxes one deals with when leaving their home country.

The company sent me a used Novatel Wirelss MiFi 2372, instructions, an extra battery and a case of adapters for various outlets throughout the world. They gave me a SIM for Spain and I was off and running.

Communications service providers once the center of the customer's world have awoken to the new reality - social and apps are the new hub. In fact, Facebook, Twitter and a wave of other social networks have fully overtaken the telephone number as the primary method of communicating among many - especially younger users. Then there are the the OTT VoIP and video vendors such as Skype. The telephone number has gone from being a protected client relationship to an afterthought.